One of the first Lexmark printer apps that isn't free, LegalZoom Landlord and Tenant Forms ($39.95 direct) gives landlords an easy way to print a variety of common forms they may need without having to create them themselves, or even download them to their computer from legalzoom.com. As with Lexmark's other LegalZoom printer apps—including, for example, LegalZoom Employment Forms ($29.95, 3 stars)—how useful the app will be, and whether it's worth the price, will depend largely on how much you need the particular forms that the app includes.

The LegalZoom site, legalzoom.com, offers a large collection of standard forms (more than 160 by my count), divided into a variety of categories, including Landlord and Tenant forms. If you go to LegalZoom using a browser, you can download a single form as a Word file, along with instructions in PDF format for how to use it, for $9.95 to $14.95, depending on the form. Alternatively, you can subscribe for $7.99 per month, which lets you download any of the forms on the site along with instructions.

In either case, you can modify the form and reuse it as many times as you like. The Landlord and Tenant Forms app, in contrast, lets you download and print a form from your printer's touch screen as often as you like for a one-time purchase price. However, there's no way to modify it before printing.

The Basics

The Landlord and Tenant Forms app is compatible with all of the current Lexmark Web connected inkjet printers, including the Interact S605, Platinum Pro905, Prestige Pro805, S815 Genesis, S816 Genesis, and the Pinnacle Pro901 that I used for my tests. Lexmark expects the app will also be compatible with future SmartSolutions-enabled printers, although it can't guarentee that.

Installing the app from Lexmark's SmartSolutions Web site is standard. Because it's not free, however, you have to go through the extra step of paying for it before you can assign it to and then download it to your printer. Note that Lexmark's licensing agreement lets you download the app to any or all of the printers you have on your account.

Once you've downloaded the app, you can choose it from the front panel touch screen, then choose the particular form to print from an onscreen list, specify whether to include the instructions as well, and give the command to print.

Helpful Instructions

For obvious reasons, you'll probably want to print the instructions the first time you use any given form, and then store them somewhere so you don't have to use up extra ink and paper for instructions every time you print the form. But you'll certainly want to keep copies of the instructions on hand.

The forms themselves are self-explanatory, but the instructions include important Dos and Don'ts. These tips can help keep you out of legal trouble or just make your work as a landlord a little easier, particularly in the kind of small operation that's most likely to take advantage of the app—like an owner of a two-family house living in one part of the house and renting the other.

For example, I never knew that if you have a written lease, you also must have a written termination of the lease, or that even if you don't have a written lease, putting the termination in writing is a good idea. You'll also find nuggets like how to decide whether an applicant should be able to pay the rent based on his or her monthly income, and a recommendation to perform a thorough investigation of the potential renter's background paired with warning that you have to get written consent first, or you're setting yourself up for possible fines and imprisonment.

The Forms

As you would expect from the name, the Landlord and Tenant Forms app lets you print only forms from the Landlord and Tenant category on LegalZoom. However the choices include only six of the 17 forms in the category:Commercial Rental Application; Termination of Lease Agreement; Residential Rental Application; Rent Receipt; Notice to Pay Rent or Quit; and Move-In, Move Out Checklist.

Missing from the list are Landlord Consent to Sublease, Landlord's Letter Returning Security Deposit, Lead Warning and Disclosure statement, and seven more.

According to Lexmark, the six forms available through the app were chosen because Lexmark and LegalZoom feel that these are the ones that the majority of small to medium size rental operations are most likely to want. But the fact remains that if you need any of the other forms, you'll still need to get them the... uh... old fashioned way, by going to legalzoom.com using your computer and downloading them as files.

Note too that there's also at least one disadvantage to using the app on the printer compared to getting the forms as files. Download the forms to your computer, and you can modify them as necessary for your own situation. The Move-in, Move-out Checklist, for example, includes entries for two bathrooms and two bedrooms as well as hallways, kitchen, living room, and so on. If the rental property actually has three bedrooms, and you have the Word file, you can adjust the form to match. If you use the printer app, you can't.

Conclusion

I've already suggested that whether the LegalZoom Landlord and Tenant Forms app is worth the price depends largely on whether these are the particular forms you need. If there are other forms in the category that you need also—or even if these are precisely forms you need, but you need to modify them—you're obviously better off just going to legalzoom.com to pay for and download the forms you need. If this particular selection includes the forms you need, however, getting the app may be less expensive, and you'll also have the convenience of being able to print them from the printer front panel.

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a...

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